The average American believed in 2020 that they had a 25% risk of dying from COVID-19

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By: Kevin Bass

Between March 2020 and June 2021, scientists at the University of Southern California asked Americans what they thought their risk of dying from COVID-19 was.

The average answer in April: 25%.

The risk of death from COVID-19 was estimated to be incredibly high early in the pandemic, reportedly as high as 17% in China in January 2020. These estimates gradually came down. On March 3, 2020, the Secretary-General of the World Health Organization declared that the mortality rate from COVID-19 was 3.4%, to enormous media coverage. Despite this, leading scientists at the time knew and immediately commented that this figure was almost certainly too high, some suggesting figures of 1-2% and others suggesting figures closer to “some strains of influenza”. Indeed, a paper published online in February by then-CDC Director Robert Redfield and Anthony Fauci suggested that the mortality rate “may be considerably less than 1%”. Due to undercounting of cases, experts also knew that during outbreaks of novel pathogens, the estimated mortality at the beginning of the pandemic appears almost always dramatically higher than it really is. For example, during the earliest weeks of the swine flu pandemic, the swine flu was predicted to have a mortality rate of 5.1%; the final estimate turned out to be 0.05%, 100-times lower.

By March 9, 2020, John Ioannidis was already publishing thoughtful pieces warning against exaggerating the threat. His thoughtful analyses of the data that led to estimates of the death rate very similar to those that we know to be accurate today. He wrote:

Early reported CFR figures also seem exaggerated. The most widely quoted CFR has been 3.4%, reported by WHO dividing the number of deaths by documented cases in early March. This ignores undetected infections and the strong age dependence of CFR. The most complete data come from Diamond Princess passengers, with CFR = 1% observed in an elderly cohort; thus, CFR may be much lower than 1% in the general population, probably higher than seasonal flu (CFR = 0.1%), but not much so.

Observed crude CFR in South Korea and in Germany, the countries with most extensive testing, is 0.9% and 0.2%, respectively, as of March 14, and crude CFR in Scandinavian countries is about 0.1%. Some deaths of infected, seriously ill people will occur later, and these deaths have not been counted yet. However, even in these countries many infections probably remain undiagnosed. Therefore, CFR (or, more properly called, infection fatality rate, counting as cases all infected individuals) may be even lower rather than higher than these crude estimates.

That is right: the WHO was reporting figures strongly at odds with then-existing expertise within epidemiology and infectious disease. Why would the World Health Organization intentionally provide figures that it knew were false?

To make matters worse, the media relentlessly amplified WHO’s 3.4% figure, and public health officials not only did not correct the record and put the brakes on the hysteria, but made policy consistent with it. The media then relentlessly ridiculed Trump for reporting the figures that were more consistent with prevailing scientific opinion within the field; the media denounced these figures as “misinformation”, as has been documented by Matt Orfalea’s must-see video. Strikingly, Trump was later vindicated: his 0.5% figure was later confirmed by scientists as almost exactly the median death rate globally: 0.47%. (It turned out to be around 0.07%, or 1-in-1500, in those under the age of 70.)

The public health establishment, through the mouthpiece of the World Health Organization, was responsible for promoting a dramatically inflated figure. Meanwhile, the media was responsible for amplifying this figure and selectively neglecting and suppressing figures that were much more consistent with the scientific evidence at the time.

Only a few brave scientists, such as Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis, broke ranks to promote authentically scientific views about the real mortality rate on popular platforms. They were relentlessly attacked and their reputations tarnished by mainstream public health officials.

What accounts for the insistence by the public health establishment and the media on figures that were inflated and at odds with prevailing scientific evidence and opinion at the time? Why did our institutions deliberately promote fear? Why did they suppress legitimate dissent?

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